Need flat icons, my lord

Text: Dmitry Zhukov, the art director of a startup, "Buy a loaf!", The art director of the design team 5EVEN, director of the portal Bodybeat.

Application icon has long been an important element of branding, in some cases, replacing the company's logo. It is an icon - the main means of contact with the audience in the "STOR". Here's where to start "Buy a loaf!", For example:

The primary format for Apple icons chosen square with rounded corners. On the one hand - this is an enormous freedom, because the icon you can draw anything you like, but for the designer icons of the old school was a torture. Everyone is used to draw a physical object, not just a square. This restriction, hitting the fertile soil very creative community and aesthetically advanced developers and designers, the company Apple's sympathizers, gave just unimaginable rewards. On site Dribbble battle broke out "Who is the best fit in the rounded square glass / phone / fruit / car."

"Buy Baton!" Also took part in it with his famous bag of groceries, which is almost no change has been with us for three versions.

All those aliens managers and executives who believe that it's all - just a showdown between the designers, who do not worth your time alien: a new icon made the application more visible and recognizable, which considerably increased the sale. In the opinion of some users, when you look at it, they could have an appetite. Icon has turned out to be so successful that it made a lot of copies and clones.

Hegemony skeuomorph on iOS could not be eternal, and Sir Jony Ive in a big way, the inherent true knight, chopped legacy of the past to pieces. Naturally, the vast number of users disliked flat and a little "freaky» iOS 7 design, but it is Apple's, baby, they can afford it.

For my taste, the new design - that's what was missing iOS ecosystem for a long time. Everyone who has ever tried to do something in the spirit of skeuomorph realize that this deadlock branch design, stupid brainless embellishment. However, there are pluses - good illustrator or technical designer can make a beautiful, albeit a poor interface, and the user does not understand the trick.

With hyper-realism in the application we have tried to leave as early as the third version, greatly simplifying all his elements, but the icon did not touch, did not dare to encroach on the sacred symbol, zipped us through of the year. By the release of iOS 7, we have drawn a completely new "Baton", literally from scratch. Donated and icon, we are left with only a schematic representation of the package and put it in some foods.

New icon "Loaf", as well as all iOS 7, relished far not all that, on the whole, correct. Even despite the fact that it was drawn quite carefully, the result was completely featureless, with a number of flaws, such as the extended bottom.

But we have not given up, it's a great reason to come up with a new one, the very icon of our (and your) dreams. Even if you think you have a great icon, it probably is not - experiment, conduct testing, try different options. That's what happened with us at this time:

Which option do you like better and why? Please tell us about it in the comments.

P.S. We also offer you the opportunity to get a full version of the "Buy a loaf!" Free. "Rassharte" this article in any social network of your choice, using the buttons at the bottom of the article and leave a link to your post in the comments. We will choose at random 20 commentators and gave each of them a promo code to the application.

© Dmitry Zhukov, "Buy a loaf!».